


Blame it on the Booze

by Not_So_Witty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_So_Witty/pseuds/Not_So_Witty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly has a night out</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s the end of a long, horrible week when Molly’s phone chirps:

 

 

> My house then Revs. I need more cocktails and less cocks!

 

A smile of pure gratitude washes over her face as she fires off a confirmation

 

 

> I finish in 5. I’ll bring wine.

 

She slides her key into the lock and lets herself into the flat that has become like a second home over the last few years, puts the bottle in the fridge and hops in the shower. The monthly routine is so familiar she has even keeps her favourite shampoo and conditioner there. She’s wrapping a towel around her hair when she hears the door slam shut and a voice singing, no shouting, along with Pharell’s Happy. She pops her head around the bathroom door to see Amy, headphones on and hands waving in the air, dance down the corridor to her and squeal in her face

‘Bring me down, can’t nothing, bring me down. Cause I’m haaaaaaappppy’

 Molly bursts out laughing, there was nothing that could delight her quite like the little ball of energy that was her best friend.

 

She had shared a flat with Amy when they were both at uni but had they had let the friendship slide a little afterwards. Then real life had hit and Amy split up with her longterm girlfriend and Molly’s dad died and the whole Sherlock, Jim, shit happened and they both found they needed their best friend again. Amy has a high powered, high energy job in the financial sector that Molly didn’t fully understand but meant that she could afford an apartment in the City. She lives the work hard/play hard lifestyle that typified city workers, but her favourite times are the payday weekends with Molly - Friday night drinks, Saturday shopping and Sunday markets.

Amy had been there the day Molly got chatting to Tom at Borough Market. He was a barista at one of the organic coffee stalls there and he had taken her number as he gave her her change. She had been shocked when the steady, sensible Molly had moved in with him after a month and considered his dog hers. She had been there when Molly had confided that she wasn’t sure if she loved Tom, but it was nice to be loved and she hadn’t the heart to say no when he proposed in front of everyone. She suggested that maybe it was better for all if she broke up with him, but she didn’t seem to want to hear it. She wasn’t sure what lead to Molly breaking off the engagement and moving back to her flat, she knew if Molly wanted to tell her then she would, but she also knew that sometimes Molly liked to keep some things secret and that’s ok too. In the meantime, she was going to make sure her best friend gets dolled up, drunk and goes dancing.

 

She pulls Molly out of the bathroom and dances her towards the kitchen, pours two hefty glasses of wine and plugs her ipod into a docking station, blaring feel good music around the room. Singing along, she dances back to the bathroom, leaving Molly to figure out what to make from her heaving fridge.

The girls get ready together, not only has their stuff migrated to each others flats over the years, but Amy also regularly buys things that she thinks will look good on Molly. The fact that she has a rail in Amy’s spare room/walk-in wardrobe has caused some friction with exes in the past, but she always insisted that if Molly was left to her own devices she would wear the entire back-catalogue of Laura Ashley. Amy has already picked out an outfit for Molly, which her friend modifies into something she’s slightly more comfortable with, a top with slightly less cleavage on show and smaller earrings. But she acquiesces to try the obscenely high heels when Amy throws a strop about how she can’t wear them because she has the feet of a child and shoes that beautiful don’t deserve to be hidden away.

They head to a cocktail bar near the flat and start working their way through the menu, catching up on workloads, family and the many dramatic tales of Amy’s adventures in dating. Oblivious of the appreciative looks they were drawing, they spent much of the night writhing in giggles at Molly’s dry, black humour and Amy’s hilarious impersonations. Amy is mid-story when Amy’s eye is caught by a familiar figure walking uncertainly through the door.

 

‘Fuck, Mee, it’s him. We have to go.’

 

‘It’s who? Tom? Sherlock? Lemme see!’

 

‘No, it’s my Greg, I mean Greg, I mean Lestrade’

 

‘Why do we have to go? Since when is he your Greg? Are you seeing him? Is that why you and Tom split up? Which one is he? Can I meet him?’

 

Molly pulled Amy back down from standing on her tiptoes and craning her neck around the bar.

 

‘He’s not mine. We’re not seeing each other, it’s not like that. You’ve heard me talk about him, he’s part of Sherlock’s bloody Scooby Gang and we’ve worked together for years. Tom did get some stupid idea in his head about him fancying me, but he always was jealous, that was one of the main reasons we split up. He was even jealous of you for Christ’s sake!

But, you know, he wasn’t completely wrong -’

 

‘What? You telling me you fancy me? Cause I’ve seen you first thing in the morning and I’m sorry Ms Malone, but you just aint my type!’

 

‘Not you, smart ass! Greg. He’s actually just a walking pile of sexy manliness. I’ve fancied him for ages, but he’s married. Well, divorced now, he was telling me at the wedding. Oh he’s lovely Mee, but he doesn’t see me in that way at all. And Tom was such a complete arse to him at the wedding, said all sorts of horrible things to him, I haven’t been able to face him since. Let’s just go to the next bar and I’ll tell you about the time I found two of the interns sleeping in a broken freezer.’

 

****

Greg knew this was a bad idea before he even walked into the first pub to meet Colin. An old colleague, he had been single for the last few years and invited him on a ‘lads night out’, his first night out as a single man. Most of Greg’s friends were part of the couples that him and Caroline had socialised with, so Colin was the only one in the group that he knew. They seemed to be equal parts mid-life crises, cynicism, desperation and alcoholism. They walked into some cocktail bar and he was glad that it was a bit of the city that he would never normally go to - less chance of bumping into anyone he actually knew. He heard a few of the men assess the ‘talent situation’ and decide that the two girls in the corner were definitely eyeing them up as he ordered a whiskey and wondered how much longer he would have to stay out. His mind circled back to recent events, but thinking about Sherlock led him to think about the wedding, and what a clusterfuck that was. Not only was there an attempted murder, but Sherlock had made him look a complete idiot in front of everyone, he had drank way too much and when he heard how that gormless twat Tom was talking to Molly he flipped. Of course Tom had seen right to the heart of it and spelled it out for Molly, he wasn’t her friend or colleague standing up for her, no fatherly figure, but instead an old man thinking he might get his leg over. After all, she’d slept with the psycho creep who had tried to kill all her friends, why not the desperate detective who couldn’t save his own marriage, much less a person. He had been mortified and went to his room with a bottle of wine from a nearby table. He had left early the next morning to avoid seeing anyone and had only gone to the morgue since on days he knew she wouldn’t be working.

He wondered if Molly was out tonight, he had heard they’d split up and couldn’t help but be glad. She deserved someone that would be nice to her, treat her the way she should be. He wondered what Molly thought of him now, whether Molly could ever look him in the eye, where Molly -

 

‘Molly!’

 

There was a crash and a cry and he looked around to see what appeared to be a bundle of arms and legs on the floor with a girl doubled over in laughter beside her. He was getting up to help when he realised who the limbs belonged to. As if he had conjured her up by obsessing over her, here she was in a tangled mess and literally at his feet. But as he pulled her up, wobbling on heels that were no doubt the cause of the fall he realised that he had never even imagined her this beautiful.

 

And then she kissed him.

 


	2. Dazed and Confused

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to turn Blame it on Booze into a series. Please bear with me, this may take some time.

It had been four days since Molly had kissed him and Greg still wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to face her again. A daze had descended on him as she had walked out the door, dragged along by her friend. Claps on the back and several rounds of drinks bought by the ‘lads’ as they readjusted their appraisal of him from ‘boring bastard’ to ‘dark horse’ had failed to shake him out of it and he had called it quits not too long after. A rare Saturday off had been spent slogging through the household chores that he was slowly getting used to.

Sunday meant back to work and being too busy to spare much thought for whether she even remembered the kiss, never mind if she meant it or what she thought of his reaction - standing stock still with his hands still grasped around her from helping her up. Although he didn’t have time to spare for those thoughts, they came nonetheless and he found he had to reread the same page of case notes before realising that he had no idea what Sally had just asked him.

By Wednesday he realised that there was no getting away from it, he had to visit the morgue for more information on a homicide victim that seemed connected to one of his cases. He knew Molly was working, but he needed her to be the one he spoke to about it, she was the best there was after all.

He screwed his courage to the sticking place - although it seemed more tacky than sticky, liable to lose grip at any stage - and headed to Barts. He wasn’t quite sure how he was more nervous going to see a murder victim than he had ever been when facing down murderers. It was the uncertainty that got to him, there were too many variables. Not least, did she even remember? She was pretty drunk. And the question that played around and around in his head, did she mean it?

Finally he reached the correct floor and, swiping his pass at the door, entered the strange haven of tranquility that was St Barts morgue.

 


	3. Heart, Brand, Bullet

Molly had been expecting Greg, both dreading the encounter and keen to get it over with. She had been horrified when the memory of her kissing him had surfaced on Saturday morning. Red cheeked, she had stumbled out of the shower, rousing Amy to confirm that she had, in fact, fallen over at a bar in front of Greg and then launched herself at him when he tried to help her up. Ever the gentleman, he had just stood there. He may not have pushed her away but he sure as hell didn’t return her kiss. Why would he? She knew he didn’t see her in that way. She was mortified, but would just have to put on her big-girl pants and get on with things. As DCI he often needed to call to her morgue to investigate the various victims that ended up there, although she wondered if he called more often than strictly necessary.  She would just have to be professional and hope that he’d forget about it. Or maybe he already had, he hadn’t seemed drunk, but looks could be mistaken, maybe he had been drunker than her and didn’t remember their encounter.

She looked up from the heart she had been dissecting as the door opened. His awkward entrance confirmed that he did, in fact, remember the scene she had made and had no idea how to proceed.

‘Oh, hi Greg. Here to see Ronald Adair?’

Stripping her gloves and picking up the relevant clipboard, Molly walked towards the body of the young murder victim, careful not to look directly at the DI. She launched into a summary of the postmortem findings, concentrating on pointing out the gunshot wounds and other salient points. It was only when she got to the branded mark that she built up the nerve to glance at Greg. His professional face was back on, his soft chocolate eyes concealing the sharp intelligence behind as he took in every detail.

‘So the bullet went right through the brand?’

‘Yes. Although he was wearing a shirt, so I don’t see how the shooter could have seen it...’

‘...Unless he already knew exactly where it was. Do you know if you could piece the skin together to see what the mark would have looked like originally?’

‘I’ve already taken a shot at it. I mean, I’ve had a go at recreating it. I’ve done the same for the first victim, the images are in the file, along with the bullet.’

Their fingers brushed as she handed over the brown folder and she fought to suppress the memory of those hands picking her up with a gentleness that was surprising and a strength that was not. His features clouded for a second, too briefly for her to analyse the emotion betrayed before his professional mask slipped back on.

‘Thanks Molls. I’d best get back to the office and check this out. I’ll see you about, yeah?’

She watched him turn and walk towards the door. Saw him pause with his hand on it, before calling out that he’d remember to bring coffee next time and then disappear without giving her time to respond. Molly stood in the middle of the stark room and told herself that she didn’t really care that Greg didn’t share her feelings. Even she didn’t believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehm, my knowledge of morgues and crime solving procedures mostly come from CSI. I apologise if I've made any glaring errors.   
> Also in the process of writing this chapter I got completely stuck and ended up creating a sub-plot. Hopefully it will end up being quite interesting. Please let me know your thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

Greg let the door swing shut behind him, two conflicting trains of thought competing for his attention. He couldn’t waste time on analysing Molly’s every movement like some love-sick teenager. Especially when his gut instinct had proved correct about the murders being connected. He got to the car and flicked the file open to compare the two pictures. As he suspected, the brands on the bodies of the supposedly unconnected victims were a match. The first, as yet still unidentified, victim had been shot twice at close range. The obvious opinion was that the shot in the lower ribs was an unintentional shot before they hit their mark in the heart. But it seemed a little too coincidental that the ‘missed’ shot had almost obliterated the branded mark that it went through. Greg had stopped believing in coincidences many years before so he’d asked Molly and a few other pathologists to be on the look out for similar marks. Of course, within a week Molly had come through for him. This one was different though, sniper-shot if he wasn’t much mistaken. The notes from the crime-scene showed that Adair had been found in a locked room, bled out through a gunshot wound through his abdomen as he had sat in front of his laptop. The open window was initially thought to have provided the killers escape route, but Greg was pretty sure that it had actually permitted the bullet a silent entrance. Again, the shot penetrated a mysterious branded mark, ruling out lazy coincidences and proving the shooter to be an expert marksman with an intimate prior knowledge of his or her victims.At least he was going to have an interesting case to keep his mind off things.

And yet, he couldn’t stop his mind from wandering back to the morgue, not to study the cold body on the slab, but to think again of the clever pathologist with the beautiful smile and the slightly odd collection of jumpers. She had clearly wanted to keep things professional and brush Friday night under the carpet. He couldn’t help feeling a little hurt and disappointed, but if she was able to act normal then so could he.  He would even go so far as to keep bringing in her favourite coffee from the cafe he often parked beside. Although he valued her professional opinion as much anyone else he knew, he had also grown to value her friendship even more. He wasn’t about to let some stupid school-boy crush ruin that. 

Greg fired off a few messages, setting the cogs of Scotland Yard into motion to track down the source of the brand and digging up all possible murder motives for the seemingly clean-cut Ronald Adair. It would take him about 15 minutes to get back to his office, he could spare that much time to try to figure out if she realised how sexy she had looked as she bit her lips when their hands touched.

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock asks Molly for drinking advice, not Greg and no one seems to notice that.


End file.
